Tip to feel good about the release #476: before reading
this, grab and fix one of the RC bugs affecting Wheezy.
Done? Now you're ready for a slightly less exciting report of DPL
activities.

Highlights

I've wrapped
up a couple of years of discussions with FSF representatives,
proposing a joint working group on FSF' assessment of Debian
Free-ness. Some news
coverage ensued. The discussion list that has been set up
welcomes participants and, in particular, could use some more DDs,
fond of Debian principles but also interested in external review of
our free/non-free separation.

DebConf12 has
happened!, and many of us attended it. Due to family reasons I've
been able to attend only DebCamp and DebConf day-0, just in time to
deliver the traditional "bits
from the DPL" speech. Among other topics, in the speech I've
discussed governance scaling issues in our governance, and in
particular about the role of the DPL --- issue which I'm partly
trying to address with the "DPL helpers" initiatives. Slides and
videos of the talk are
available.

As many others DebConf people, I took part in Nicaraguan TV
shows about DebConf, showing a good deal of interest by the local
media in our presence. I don't have links to the recordings yet,
but I suspect DebConf orga people will provide them as soon as
they're available.

Many others DebConf12 events are relevant for future Project
directions. I went through many of the events
I've missed thanks to the work of the video team and of the
gobby note takers. I
recommend doing the same. Some events are particularly relevant to
recent project-wide discussions, such as EFI,
hijacking,
and the release
process … and I'm sure you'll find more If you're a
DebConf12 speaker and produced slides, please upload them to penta,
so that they could be used as future reference.

Assets

On the hardware front, we bought another server according to
DSA's "5-year plan". It will be used as a ganeti node at the man-da
hosting location. We bought it thanks to donated money, for a
total of ~6'600 EUR.

(After ~8 months of pestering,) we got from SPI a data dump of
Debian financial transactions there. Thanks for this result goes to
the SPI Board and in particular to Robert Brockway and Joerg
Jaspert. This was the last blocker to produce detailed financial
reports for the past couple of years of Debian activities.
Unfortunately, it still is a blocker: Debian auditors
found out that the data dump is not complete. SPI will send us
remaining data soon™, but I don't have an ETA, unfortunately.

An ftpmasters
sprint is being organized and I've been happy to approve its
budget. Help is still needed on the -sprints list to keep up with
the organization part of sprints, including activities like
documenting sprints to show donors what we do with their
help.

Logo & trademark

to stop the absurdity of not using the official logo ("with
Debian") as part of our official theme, I advanced a bit on the
topic of relicensing the logo under a DFSG-free license. I sought a
second legal advice to SFLC (as requested by the SPI board). They
confirm we can safely do the relicensing (without undermining our
rights on contained marks) under a license like dual LGPLv3+ /
CC-BY-SA, provided that a suitable trademark policy is in place
…

… which is why I've posted to -project a trademark
policy draft, based on legal advice from SFLC. I've gather
useful feedback already, but more is welcome. Note that, as
Russ very eloquently put it, we do not particularly enjoy
thinking about which restrictions we put on the usage of
our marks. But given we do have (and use) those marks, we should
better empower the legal owners (SPI in this case) to properly
defend them. Our specification for the policy to SFLC has been "as
free as possible", and that is what we're trying to achieve.

Note that the actual logo relicensing should be done by SPI, via
their board, upon request of mine (as Debian Project liaison). We
won't make it for the next SPI board meeting, as it is on 4 days
away. But we can aim for the subsequent meeting, on September 13th.
If all goes well (big "if"), we will enjoy a DFSG-free logo after
that date.

Internal organization

Recent flurry of re-organization in the tech-ctte --- which I
somewhat triggered pushing for periodic meetings --- seems to be
proceeding well. I'm very happy about it, as we all need to trust
that tech-ctte decisions will be not only sound, but also prompt.
If you're interested into this topic, some recent evidence of the
ongoing reorganization and its result can be found in their
DebConf12 BoF, minutes
of the last meeting, a set of forthcoming
GRs, and the recent great decision of posting decisions results
to d-d-a (as it happened for
node/nodejs). Kudos to tech-ctte members for the recent
activism!

I haven't worked on it myself directly, but I highlight Enrico's
work on server side archival
of NM conversations. It has the potential of enabling automatic
detection of stuck NM processes. I'm a bit rusty as AM now, but I
think missing that ability is one of the main remaining causes of
frustration when joining Debian. So, if you are an AM, please
opt-in and use this feature with your appicants. If you are not an
AM… why not?

Miscellanea

Some misc legal stuff:

I got the legal advice we asked about the possibility of turning
mentors.debian.net into an official service. The worry there was
about the potential copyright infringements by mentees. In the end,
we don't need to worry about that, provided we've clear contact
points (and "reasonable" timing…) for removing infringing material
once it's been reported, and that we declare our public
policy about that. I've a draft policy document to start with. I'll
soon contact mentors.d.n to adapt it where needed and have it
vetted by SPI before going live.

I've worked with GNOME maintainers (thanks in particular to
Jordi Mallach) to rework the mixed Debian/GNOME logo on their
alioth project page, to stay on the safe side and avoid any
ambiguity wrt GNOME trademark policy.

… and some misc "political" stuff:

we've been happy to accept an invitation to attend the GNOME
Advisory Board meeting at GUADEC: Jord (thanks, again!) kindly
accepted to represent Debian there. An early
report has been posted on his blog, a more detailed one is
forthcoming to -project.

OSI has discussed with their affiliates the possibility of
signing the Declaration
of Internet Freedom. On behalf of Debian, I've vouched for it.
By the way, I'm serving pro tempore as Debian liaison at OSI, but
if there are people interested in doing that, I'll be happy to
consider handing over the responsibility to other (it's a quite
lightweight one, at present).